​Vauxhall has announced that it’s planning a surprise new SUV model that will hopefully go on sale in 2028. 

The car will be based on the electric platform developed by Chinese carmaker Leapmotor, which has an agreement with Vauxhall’s parent company Stellantis to sell its cars across the world using Stellantis’s dealer network. 

Chinese carmakers have become notable in recent years for their ability to get a car to market from the drawing board stage in a fraction of the time of traditional Western carmakers, and this new car will certainly put the Chinese/European alliance to the test. 

​Leapmotor has the platform ready, and the proposal is for the car to be built at Stellantis’s factory in Zaragoza in northern Spain alongside the Leapmotor B10, which indicates that they will share the same underpinnings. Though the plan is for B10 production to start at the plant before the end of this year. 

But can Vauxhall and its German sister brand Opel get a car to market from scratch in just two years? It’ll be fascinating to find out. 

The marriage of Leapmotor’s technical expertise on the electric powertrain and supply chain leverage in China with Vauxhall/Opel’s design knowhow and chassis engineering experience should be perfect on paper. 

How will the new car fit in at Vauxhall? 

Vauxhall already has the Mokka, Frontera and Grandland models in its SUV lineup, so it looks fairly packed already on that front. 

The current version of the Mokka was introduced in 2021, so that will be up for retirement in 2028, but that will be a key platform sharing car across the whole of the Stellantis portfolio and it’s too small to go alongside the Leapmotor B10.

The larger Frontera only went on sale in January 2025, so 2028 will be too early to replace that car. It’s also a touch too small for what we’re expecting here. 

The Grandland is a bit older, that went on sale in 2024, so it’ll be due a facelift by 2028 and is another car that shares its underbits with a whole load of other Stellantis models. And it’s actually a bit bigger than the B10, so... could something fit ‘twixt Frontera and Grandland in the Vauxhall range? Looks like it’s going to have to.